Ripped (Real, Book 5)

4.5 Fantastic Stars "To second chances, especially the chance to do it right."

It all started with Remy and Brooke. Love blooming in the most unlikely place. What happens when love has bloomed and then been trampled on and left to die? Throughout the Real series we have read about the damaged goth friend Pandora. We have sympathized with her, been annoyed by her, and watched her envy her friends as they found their prince charming. Why is Pandora the woman that she is? Ripped is the story of what happens when love goes wrong. As the story begins, Pandora drags Melanie to a packed rock concert. Armed with rotten tomatoes, eggs, and other paraphernalia Pandora wants to get revenge on the lead singer Kenna. He broke her heart many years before. She wants to humiliate him and make him pay. Kenna was her first love. He left her. When he left, she became so broken that she has yet to recover from the loss. "I swear I haven’t had sex in so long, I’ve been revirginized. I can’t even remember what feeling good feels like."-Pandora The raucous causes Pandora to attract the attention of the band's manager. Because Kenna has written a hit song about his romance with Pandora, she is quite a legend. "Those harlot’s lips To taste and torment me Those little tricks That tease and torture me"-Kenna The band manager decides that Pandora should tour for a few weeks with the band. The world will have the chance to witness the heartbreak romance of Kenna and the infamous Pandora. The financial gain for Pandora is so great that she doesn't hesitate to take the offer. Before she knows what has hit her, she is touring with the band. She is forced to spend time with the one man that stole her happiness away. Kenna is a bad boy with a filthy mouth. He makes no apologies for who he is. "I like bad things— booze, threesomes, orgies, smoking. But the baddest thing I’ve ever wanted is Pandora."-Kenna Despite his rock god persona, there is just something about him that oozes tenderness. We recognize it as the love he still harbors for Pandora. After all of these years, the heart break, the hurt, the tears, Kenna decides that he wants Pandora back. No matter what happens, Pandora refuses to let him in. She has been burned to badly to open herself up to him again. "No, we can’t, because I’m too wimpy to survive him twice. Because even if he likes me a little bit once more, he won’t like me for real when he learns what sort of secrets I hide . You get struck by lightning once and survive, lucky you, but you won’t survive twice. That’s for sure."-Pandora There is so much happening beneath the action of this piece. I thoroughly enjoyed the dual POV that this author gifted to her readers. I found it critical in order to understand both Kenna and Pandora. It is so important that the reader remain neutral as events are unfolded and things begin to fall in to place. The story also shifts in time from the past to the present. I tend to get annoyed and confused when books time warp. However, in Ripped I thoroughly enjoyed the reminicsing that took place between these two characters. "We were both virgins once. You’d expect it to be awkward that first time, but it wasn’t. It felt like being swept up by a storm. Disheveled and destroyed inside on some level I never recovered from. When we were done, she was softly crying in my arms. I felt as unhinged as a building shaken to its foundations. I’d lost control, and so had she. I didn’t know what to do, what I’d done wrong, how to make it right." You want the miscommunication to end. You want these two characters to just sit down and fight it out. The reader is left dying to know what happened! How did these two ever break apart? “Because you’ll hold my hand, and I’ll get used to the way it feels, and before I know it, you’ll let go of it . . . again,” “I had your heart once, Pink, and it wasn’t enough. I have your body now, but it’s not enough .” He holds my face in order to force my eyes to stay on his as he demands, “I want your mind, your dreams, your hopes, your fucking soul. I want it all."-Kenna Overall, Ripped is not your typical rock star read. Kenna deep down just wants a normal life. The writing style of Katy Evans is fluid and easy to live in! Kenna and Pandora are both beautiful characters. I do not want to give anything away regarding the outcome of the story. I only wish to say that I highly recommend this book to anyone that is a fan of second chances, steamy sex, high tension, and a ton of verbal sparring. I can honestly say that the theme has been explored in numerous books before. However, the execution of this story will leave you breathless.

#45stars #review #favoriteauthor #rockstar #contemporary